Ecosystem Roundup: Ula lays off 134 employees, Iterative closes US$55M Fund II, Temasek’s FTX investment scrutinised in parliament

Tiger Global-backed Ula lays off 134 employees
It is about 23% of its workforce; The B2B e-commerce marketplace cited market turbulence, commodity price volatility, supply shortages, regulatory changes, and rising crude oil prices as its reasons for the move.

Temasek’s FTX investment scrutinised in Singapore parliament
An internal unit at Temasek will conduct the review separately from the team that decided to invest in FTX and will report directly to the board; This is a step up from the company’s usual review process for all its investments.

Animoca Brands to launch US$2B metaverse fund
The firm has made a staggering 66 investments in H1 2022, making the record for the most done in the cryptocurrency space; Animoca was valued at US$5.9B last July after raising US$75.3M.

Binance reenters Japan with crypto exchange acquisition
Binance has acquired a 100% stake in Sakura Exchange Bitcoin (SEBC); In 2018, Binance exited the country after receiving a warning from the Japan Financial Services Agency for operating without a license.

GoTo shares fall to a new low after stock lockup expires
The stock price plunged 6.6% to US$0.009 on Thursday morning, down 58% from the IPO price of US$0.022; Its valuation has now fallen to ~US$10B from US$15B in October-end.

Carousell posts US$49.5M in revenue in 2021 as growth slows
In the year ending December 31, 2021, the Singapore-based firm’s losses before taxes narrowed 33.5% year on year to US$43.9M as it trimmed total expenses by 14.4% to US$95.4M.

Asia Partners eyes US$600M fundraise for SEA fund
Asia Partners invests in startups with ticket sizes ranging from US$20M to US$100M, which commonly lies within the Series C or Series D rounds of investments.

SG’s Iterative closes US$55M Fund II for early-stage investments
The LPs include Cendana, K5 Global, Village Global, and Goodwater Capital; The new funding will allow Iterative to increase its check sizes to US$500K and add more programmes for founders in different stages.

Beenext said to be raising large Asia fund
Sources told DealStreetAsia that the fund could target a corpus of around US$280M and may rope in a Japanese bank as one of the leading LPs; The fund has already raised a few double-digit million dollars.

Alibaba launches e-commerce platform in Spain
Miravia’s launch comes after Lazada received infusions of US$912.5M and US$378M in funding from its parent firm Alibaba this year; It was reported then that Lazada was eyeing an expansion into Europe.

Indonesia’s top Islamic group trains slights on tech investments
It plans to launch an endowment fund to invest across various sectors; The organisation made its first investment in Jakarta-based healthtech firm Zi.Care.

Igloo extends its Series B to US$46M with a US$27M tranche
The investors include InsuResilience Investment Fund II, WAM, Finnfund, La Maison, and Cathay Innovation; Igloo provides “competitively-priced” insurance for delivery riders in Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

MAS awards major payment institution license to MetaComp
With a major payment institution license, the crypto platform can provide digital asset services to corporates as well as traditional and crypto-native institutional investors.

Malaysia’s Al Rajhi Bank launches digibank offering
ARBM said a wide range of services is already available on its digibank app Rize, including deposits, account and personal finance management, debit card application, and ATM services.

In photos: SCB 10X’s 10,000 sqft web3 collaborative space DISTRICTX in Bangkok
The space is equipped with meeting rooms, a town hall, an operational war room, a podcast room and a dining space; DistrictX will host a bi-monthly workshop to engage the community by sharing knowledge and building projects.

CeFi, a ‘necessary evil’ today: 7 reasons why trustless DEX is the future
An increasing number of DEXes are integrating scaling solutions that will massively increase transaction workload while keeping costs low.

Connectivity, infrastructure are key barriers for fund managers to adopt tokens: Calastone
How can we eliminate this barrier? According to Ross Fox of Calastone, adoption is a key challenge for tokenised investments.

Is “teleporting” between workspaces truly possible?
How Japanese startup, tonari, helps people “teleport” to different workspaces in our increasingly remote work environment.

Are you a human resource?
When an organisation describes their people as “human resources”, they were diminishing the fundamental miracle of each and every person.

Building bridges: Asia’s fintech firms look to DIFC to cross into MEASA markets
Fintechs from Singapore and wider Asian markets are looking to establish themselves in DIFC and make sizeable investments in our ecosystem.

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